Page 10 of The Girl with a Thousand Faces
“No!” she gasped, as much to rebuke the pain as to answer reflexively.
“Lies! Lies, lies,lies!” The dead girl launched up at her, mouth twisted into a snarl.
Mercy didn’t even have to react. Bao tackled the girl from the side, lion sized and roaring.
Supernatural or not, the girl had a slight frame that buckled under the ghost cat’s hefty corporeality. She crashed sideways to the ground under a heap of maogui flesh.
And before Mercy could even think the word “stop,” let alone shout it, Bao put his jaws around the dead kid’s head and bit down.
There was a sound like a watermelon bursting, followed by silence. The headless body toppled into the well.
Mercy probably should have tried to catch the body and haul it out, rather than allow yet another contaminant into the water system below. Instead, she was too busy swallowing sick, repulsed by the pop of blood and brains that squished from between Bao’s teeth. She loved her pet, but in moments like these, she remembered why most people ran from ghost cats, or tried to banish them.
Around them, the gray water receded rapidly, seeming to either sink into the ground or retreat back into the well from which it had surged. The mangled head was gone, swallowed cheerfully into Bao’s gullet.
“What the hell was that about?” Mercy said out loud, hands still shaking from the encounter. She’d faced down death before, and seen far more gruesome ghosts than this one. Yet the intensity of the experience had unnerved her deeply. “Demons leaving messages? Ghosts with a personal angle? I don’t like this.”
Bao looked at her, tail lashing. Far from bored or indifferent, he seemed curiously alert and intense; he had still not shrunk back down to his kitten size. As if he still sensed a threat.
From elsewhere in the neighborhood, a clatter of noise echoed: voices talking, laughing, arguing. Even quiet spaces like this did not stay quiet long, in Kowloon. Other people would be here soon.
“Let’s put some warding talismans down,” she said, rising to her feet. “After that, we’re heading home. There are no answers here, and I still need a bath.”
4A GOOD BATH
August 20, 1975
The bath was heaven for the entire fifteen minutes Mercy sat in it. She scrubbed until all trace of salt and grime and burned furniture and brain matter was gone. Eventually, she felt almost human again.
Being clean was a luxury she would never take for granted. In the old days, before Cobra Lily had plucked her from obscurity and squalor, Mercy hadn’t ever bathed. Mostly because she hadn’t owned a tub. She’d made do with a quick rag-rinse over a sink in the evenings.
These days, with triad money and filtered rainwater coming through newly built pipes, Mercy could bask in the satisfaction of actually feeling clean. Lying here, half floating, she could almost forget about the day’s madness.
“Almost” being the key word.
I am a messenger.
Her shoulders twitched.
The demon who killed me wanted me to ask you a question.
Mercy took a deep breath through her nose.
Do you remember the island, Chen Mei Chi?
Mercy sat up and turned off the faucet. In all her years, no ghost had ever posed such a personal, shocking question. She did not remember the specifics of an island, but the dreams and waking visions were a clear indication of some lost, unremembered past.
The question could mean nothing. Over the years, she had gathered a modest reputation among ghosts and living humans alike in this district. Outside of Kowloon, no one really knew her, but quite a few people within these walls did. Many knew a few snippets of her past, or had heard rumors of her missing memory. That a ghost would reference it in conversation was a little odd, but not wildly so.
The mention of a “demon” was disquieting, though. Demons could refer to different things, from actual denizens of the underworld, to malignant gods, to particularly vicious ghosts. Without more context, it was hard to say which the water fetcher had been thinking of. Regardless, it was never a good thing to have one in the neighborhood.
Or, perhaps she was overthinking it. It was Ghost Month, after all, and that always came with a barrage of particularly strange encounters. The ghosts were stronger, more connected to the world of the living, and often seemed to know or say things that they should not normally.
Either way, she couldn’t sit here all day. Time to report to her boss. Mercy pulled the plug and climbed out.
The second she stepped from the tub, the heat came right back and draped over her like a moist blanket. Hot. Heavy. Suffocatingly damp. She toweled off a mix of cool water and fresh sweat, threw on some clothes, and parted the jangling bead curtain with one hand.
Her flat was well shaded, boasting freestanding fans in two corners and a slow-turning one on the ceiling. Warding fu talismans hung over doors and on windows, to keep out errant ghosts. Afternoon sunlight streamed through slatted blinds, hazy with dust motes. Thirteen stories up was high enough to snag some sky, although it did get a little noisy with all the passing planes.
